Mines bigger than yours dept

[Wavytone]

Fancy constructing a building to use the room on the top as the camera ? 30kg glass plates 1.3m wide ?

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/140yearold-images-of-sydney-harbour-win-place-in-unescos-memory-of-the-world-registry-20171031-gzbs4u.html

Makes me wonder what the lens was !

[billdan]

pinhole lens :lol:

[julianh72]

Presumably a "Mammoth Plate" camera, similar to the one described here:
http://robroy.dyndns.info/lawrence/mammoth.html

"It was a camera unlike any other in the world. It weighed 900 lbs and when loaded with the 500 lb plate holder made a total of 1400 lbs. When fully extended the bed was about 20 ft long and the camera had a double swing front and back. Across the top of the frame at the rear was a small track on which two focusing screens were mounted to move back and forth like sliding doors. 11 Two Zeiss patent lenses were especially made by the Bausch and Lomb Optical Company of Rochester, NY. 12 One was a wide-angle lens of 5½ ft equivalent focus and the second one, which was used to make the train photograph, was a telescopic rectilinear lens of 10 ft equivalent focus. The camera was so large that prior to exposure a man could enter and dust off the plate "